Best of
Technology
2018
Refactoring UI
Adam Wathan - 2018
Learn how to design beautiful user interfaces by yourself using specific tactics explained from a developer's point-of-view.
The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future
Andrew Yang - 2018
The shift toward automation is about to create a tsunami of unemployment. Not in the distant future—now. One recent estimate predicts 45 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next twelve years—jobs that won't be replaced. In a future marked by restlessness and chronic unemployment, what will happen to American society? In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang paints a dire portrait of the American economy. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and automation software are making millions of Americans' livelihoods irrelevant. The consequences of these trends are already being felt across our communities in the form of political unrest, drug use, and other social ills. The future looks dire-but is it unavoidable? In The War on Normal People, Yang imagines a different future—one in which having a job is distinct from the capacity to prosper and seek fulfillment. At this vision's core is Universal Basic Income, the concept of providing all citizens with a guaranteed income-and one that is rapidly gaining popularity among forward-thinking politicians and economists. Yang proposes that UBI is an essential step toward a new, more durable kind of economy, one he calls "human capitalism."
The Perfect Weapon: How the Cyber Arms Race Set the World Afire
David E. Sanger - 2018
The Perfect Weapon is the riveting story of how, in less than a decade, cyberwarfare displaced terrorism and nuclear attacks as the greatest threat to American national security. Cheap to acquire, difficult to defend against, and designed to shield their user's identities so as to complicate retaliation, these weapons are capable of an unprecedented range of offensive tactics; they can take us just short of war, allowing for everything from disruption to theft to the cause of widespread damage of essential infrastructure systems. And the vulnerability of those systems has created a related but equally urgent conflict: American companies like Apple and Cisco must claim allegiance to no government in the name of selling secure products around the globe yet the US intelligence agencies want the help of such companies in defending against future cyberattacks. Reported and written with unprecedented access by New York Times chief Washington correspondent and bestselling author David Sanger, The Perfect Weapon takes readers inside war rooms and boardrooms, into the secret cyberdens of American and Chinese military, to give the deep-background story of the increasingly pitched battle between nations, their governments, their cyberwarriors, and their corporations.
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media
P.W. Singer - 2018
This urgent report is required reading, from defense expert P.W. Singer and Council on Foreign Relations fellow Emerson Brooking.
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality and Our Destiny Beyond Earth
Michio Kaku - 2018
More than a possibility, it is becoming a necessity: whether our hand is forced by climate change and resource depletion or whether future catastrophes compel us to abandon Earth, one day we will make our homes among the stars.World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku explores in rich, accessible detail how humanity might gradually develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. With his trademark storytelling verve, Kaku shows us how science fiction is becoming reality: mind-boggling developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology could enable us to build habitable cities on Mars; nearby stars might be reached by microscopic spaceships sailing through space on laser beams; and technology might one day allow us to transcend our physical bodies entirely.With irrepressible enthusiasm and wonder, Dr. Kaku takes readers on a fascinating journey to a future in which humanity could finally fulfil its long-awaited destiny among the stars - and perhaps even achieve immortality.
How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone
Brian McCullough - 2018
In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first “dotcom.”Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape’s Marc Andreessen and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough also reveals surprising quirks and unknown tales as he tracks both the technology and the culture around the internet’s rise. Cinematic in detail and unprecedented in scope, the result both enlightens and informs as it draws back the curtain on the new rhythm of disruption and innovation the internet fostered, and helps to redefine an era that changed every part of our lives.
The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking
Saifedean Ammous - 2018
Can this young upstart money challenge the global monetary order? Economist Saifedean Ammous traces the history of the technologies of money to seashells, limestones, cattle, salt, beads, metals, and government debt, explaining what gave these technologies their monetary role, what makes for sound money, and the benefits of a sound monetary regime to economic growth, innovation, culture, trade, individual freedom, and international peace.The monetary and historical analysis sets the stage for understanding the mechanics of the operation of Bitcoin, the reasons for its initial success, and the role it could play in an information economy. Rather than serving as a currency and network for consumer purchases, the author argues Bitcoin is better suited as a store of value and network for settlement between large financial institutions. With an automated and perfectly predictable monetary policy, and the ability to perform final settlement of large sums across the world in a matter of minutes, Bitcoin's true importance may just lie in providing a decentralized, neutral, free-market alternative to national central banks.
Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms
Hannah Fry - 2018
It’s time we stand face-to-digital-face with the true powers and limitations of the algorithms that already automate important decisions in healthcare, transportation, crime, and commerce. Hello World is indispensable preparation for the moral quandaries of a world run by code, and with the unfailingly entertaining Hannah Fry as our guide, we’ll be discussing these issues long after the last page is turned.
Disruptive Witness
Alan Noble - 2018
These two trends define life in Western society today. We are increasingly addicted to habits―and devices―that distract and "buffer" us from substantive reflection and deep engagement with the world. And we live in what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls "a secular age"―an age in which all beliefs are equally viable and real transcendence is less and less plausible. Drawing on Taylor's work, Alan Noble describes how these realities shape our thinking and affect our daily lives. Too often Christians have acquiesced to these trends, and the result has been a church that struggles to disrupt the ingrained patterns of people's lives. But the gospel of Jesus is inherently disruptive: like a plow, it breaks up the hardened surface to expose the fertile earth below. In this book Noble lays out individual, ecclesial, and cultural practices that disrupt our society's deep-rooted assumptions and point beyond them to the transcendent grace and beauty of Jesus. Disruptive Witness casts a new vision for the evangelical imagination, calling us away from abstraction and cliché to a more faithful embodiment of the gospel for our day.
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
Kai-Fu Lee - 2018
Kai-Fu Lee—one of the world’s most respected experts on AI and China—reveals that China has suddenly caught up to the US at an astonishingly rapid and unexpected pace.In AI Superpowers, Kai-Fu Lee argues powerfully that because of these unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power.Most experts already say that AI will have a devastating impact on blue-collar jobs. But Lee predicts that Chinese and American AI will have a strong impact on white-collar jobs as well. Is universal basic income the solution? In Lee’s opinion, probably not. But he provides a clear description of which jobs will be affected and how soon, which jobs can be enhanced with AI, and most importantly, how we can provide solutions to some of the most profound changes in human history that are coming soon.
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
Simon Winchester - 2018
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider.Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia.As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?
The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos
Christian Davenport - 2018
Nearly a half-century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these Space Barons-most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with Richard Branson and Paul Allen-are using Silicon Valley-style innovation to dramatically lower the cost of space travel, and send humans even further than NASA has gone. These entrepreneurs have founded some of the biggest brands in the world-Amazon, Microsoft, Virgin, Tesla, PayPal-and upended industry after industry. Now they are pursuing the biggest disruption of all: space. Based on years of reporting and exclusive interviews with all four billionaires, this authoritative account is a dramatic tale of risk and high adventure, the birth of a new Space Age, fueled by some of the world's richest men as they struggle to end governments' monopoly on the cosmos. The Space Barons is also a story of rivalry-hard-charging startups warring with established contractors, and the personal clashes of the leaders of this new space movement, particularly Musk and Bezos, as they aim for the moon and Mars and beyond.
The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
Tim Wu - 2018
But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century.In The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.
Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex
Yasha Levine - 2018
This idea--using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad--drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology.But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden.With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news--and the device on which you read it.
Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10
Todd Hoff - 2018
And I mean all the time. Every day there’s a new cloud-based dating app; a new cloud-based gizmo for your house; a new cloud-based game; or a thousand other new things—all in the cloud.The cloud is everywhere! Everything is in the cloud! What does it mean! Let’s slow down. Take a deep breath. That’s good. Take another. Excellent. This book teaches you all about the cloud. I’ll let you in on a little secret: the cloud is not that hard to understand. It’s not. It’s just that nobody has taken the time to explain to you what the cloud is. They haven’t, have they?Deep down I think this is because they don’t understand the cloud either, but I do. I’ve been a programmer and writer for over 30 years. I’ve been in cloud computing since the very start, and I’m here to help you on your journey to understand the cloud. Consider me your tour guide. I’ll be with you every step of the way, but not in a creepy way.I take my time with this book. I go slow and easy, so you can build up an intuition about what the cloud really is, one idea at a time. When you finish reading, you’ll understand the cloud. When you hear someone say some new cool thing is in the cloud, you’ll understand exactly what they mean. That’s a promise. How do I deliver on that promise? I use lots and lots of pictures. I use lots and lots of examples. We’ll reveal the secret inner-workings of AWS, Netflix, Facebook Messenger, Amazon Kindle, Apple iCloud, Google Maps, Nest and cloud DVRs. You’ll learn by seeing and understanding; no matter if you're a complete beginner, someone who knows a little and wants to learn more, or a programmer looking to change their career to the cloud.The cloud is the future. You don't want to miss out on the future, do you? Read this book and we'll discover it together.I’m excited. This will be fun. Let’s get started!
Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now
Alan Rusbridger - 2018
Once-powerful newspapers have lost their clout or been purchased by owners with particular agendas. Algorithms select which stories we see. The Internet allows consequential revelations, closely guarded secrets, and dangerous misinformation to spread at the speed of a click.In Breaking News, Alan Rusbridger demonstrates how these decisive shifts have occurred, and what they mean for the future of democracy. In the twenty years he spent editing The Guardian, Rusbridger managed the transformation of the progressive British daily into the most visited serious English-language newspaper site in the world. He oversaw an extraordinary run of world-shaking scoops, including the exposure of phone hacking by London tabloids, the Wikileaks release of U.S.diplomatic cables, and later the revelation of Edward Snowden's National Security Agency files. At the same time, Rusbridger helped The Guardian become a pioneer in Internet journalism, stressing free access and robust interactions with readers. Here, Rusbridger vividly observes the media's transformation from close range while also offering a vital assessment of the risks and rewards of practicing journalism in a high-impact, high-stress time.
The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains: An Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and the Technology that Powers Them
Antony Lewis - 2018
But, for the uninitiated, most of this information can be indecipherable. The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains aims to provide an accessible guide to this new currency and the revolutionary technology that powers it.Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies: Gain an understanding of a broad spectrum of Bitcoin topics. The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains covers topics such as the history of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin blockchain, and Bitcoin buying, selling, and mining. It also answers how payments are made and how transactions are kept secure. Other cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency pricing are examined, answering how one puts a value on cryptocurrencies and digital tokens.Blockchain technology: Blockchain technology underlies all cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency transactions. But what exactly is a blockchain, how does it work, and why is it important? The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains will answer these questions and more. Learn about notable blockchain platforms, smart contracts, and other important facets of blockchains and their function in the changing cyber-economy.Things to know before buying cryptocurrencies: The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains offers trustworthy and balanced insights to those interested in Bitcoin investing or investing in other cryptocurrency. Discover the risks and mitigations, learn how to identify scams, and understand cryptocurrency exchanges, digital wallets, and regulations with this book.Readers will learn about:
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Blockchain technology and how it works
The workings of the cryptocurrency market
The evolution and potential impacts of Bitcoin and blockchains on global businesses
Dive into the world of cryptocurrency with confidence with this comprehensive introduction.
Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations
Nicole Forsgren - 2018
Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff - 2018
The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification."The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit--at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future.With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future--if we let it.Table of contentsINTRODUCTION1. Home or exile in the digital futureI. THE FOUNDATIONS OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM2. August 9, 2011: Setting the stage for Surveillance Capitalism3. The discovery of behavioral surplus4. The moat around the castle5. The elaboration of Surveillance Capitalism: Kidnap, corner, compete6. Hijacked: The division of learning in societyII. THE ADVANCE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM7. The reality business8. Rendition: From experience to data9. Rendition from the depths10. Make them dance11. The right to the future tenseIII. INSTRUMENTARIAN POWER FOR A THIRD MODERNITY12. Two species of power13. Big Other and the rise of instrumentarian power14. A utopia of certainty15, The instrumentarian collective16. Of life in the hive17. The right to sanctuaryCONCLUSION18. A coup from aboveAcknowledgementsAbout the authorDetailed table of contentsNotesIndex
The Game Console: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox
Evan Amos - 2018
You'll start your journey with legendary consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Commodore 64. The visual nostalgia trip continues with systems from the 1990s and 2000s, and ends on modern consoles like the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U.Throughout the book, you'll also discover many consoles you never knew existed, and even find a rare peek at the hardware inside several of history's most iconic video game systems.
New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future
James Bridle - 2018
Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In actual fact, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. Despite the accessibility of information, we’re living in a new Dark Age. From rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence to state secrecy, we no longer understand how our world is governed or presented to us. The media is filled with unverifiable speculation, much of it generated by anonymous software, while companies dominate their employees through surveillance and the threat of automation. In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle excavates the limits of technology and how it aids our understanding of the world. Surveying the history of art, technology, and information systems, he explores the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.
Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and DApps
Andreas M. Antonopoulos - 2018
This platform enables you to run decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts that have no central points of failure or control, integrate with a payment network, and operate on an open blockchain. With this practical guide, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Gavin Wood provide everything you need to know about building smart contracts and DApps on Ethereum and other virtual-machine blockchains.Discover why IBM, Microsoft, NASDAQ, and hundreds of other organizations are experimenting with Ethereum. This essential guide shows you how to develop the skills necessary to be an innovator in this growing and exciting new industry.Run an Ethereum client, create and transmit basic transactions, and program smart contractsLearn the essentials of public key cryptography, hashes, and digital signaturesUnderstand how wallets hold digital keys that control funds and smart contractsInteract with Ethereum clients programmatically using JavaScript libraries and Remote Procedure Call interfacesLearn security best practices, design patterns, and anti-patterns with real-world examplesCreate tokens that represent assets, shares, votes, or access control rightsBuild decentralized applications using multiple peer-to-peer (P2P) components
Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—And How It Will Reshape Our World
Lawrence D. Burns - 2018
Soon, few of us will own our own automobiles and instead will get around in driverless electric vehicles that we summon with the touch of an app. We will be liberated from driving, prevent over 90% of car crashes, provide freedom of mobility to the elderly and disabled, and decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. Autonomy is the story of the maverick engineers and computer nerds who are creating the revolution. Longtime advisor to the Google Self-Driving Car team and former GM research and development chief Lawrence D. Burns provides the perfectly-timed history of how we arrived at this point, in a character-driven and heavily reported account of the unlikely thinkers who accomplished what billion-dollar automakers never dared.Beginning with the way 9/11 spurred the U.S. government to set a million-dollar prize for a series of off-road robot races in the Mojave Desert up to the early 2016 stampede to develop driverless technology, Autonomy is a page-turner that represents a chronicle of the past, diagnosis of the present, and prediction of the future—the ultimate guide to understanding the driverless car and navigating the revolution it sparks.
Alexander Graham Bell: A Life From Beginning to End
Hourly History - 2018
Innovator. Inventor. These three words sum up Alexander Graham Bell, one of the greatest scientific men of his era. He is most famous for the invention of the telephone, a device which he predicted would transform human society. And it did. But the telephone is just one of the many innovations and inventions that Bell brought into being. Inside you will read about... - Childhood - Emigration to North America - The Bell Telephone Company - The Race to Save the President - A Rival to the Wright Brothers - Later Years and Death And much more! A man who epitomizes the word visionary, Alexander Graham Bell predicted the use of light as a medium for transmitting information and how humanity would be transformed by flight. This is his story.
Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
Ken Kocienda - 2018
Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years the Steve Jobs era--the Golden Age of Apple.Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple's creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation--inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy--and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.
HWFG
Chris McQueer - 2018
In HWFG...Your fave Sammy gets a job and Angie goes to Craig Tara.Plans are made to kick the f*ck out of Kim Jong-Un. You’ll find answers to the big questions in life: What happens when we die?What does Brexit actually mean?Why are moths terrifying?What are ghosts like to live with?It’s just a load more short stories ‘n that.hwfg x
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
Adam Fisher - 2018
It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and NurtureshockA candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley -- from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly--and as aggressively--as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation. So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius...Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, VALLEY OF GENIUS takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. Read it to discover the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.
AIQ: How People and Machines Are Smarter Together
Nick Polson - 2018
AIQ explores the fascinating history of the ideas that drive this technology of the future and demystifies the core concepts behind it; the result is a positive and entertaining look at the great potential unlocked by marrying human creativity with powerful machines.” —Steven D. Levitt, bestselling co-author of Freakonomics
From leading data scientists Nick Polson and James Scott, what everyone needs to know to understand how artificial intelligence is changing the world and how we can use this knowledge to make better decisions in our own lives.
Dozens of times per day, we all interact with intelligent machines that are constantly learning from the wealth of data now available to them. These machines, from smart phones to talking robots to self-driving cars, are remaking the world in the 21st century in the same way that the Industrial Revolution remade the world in the 19th century. AIQ is based on a simple premise: if you want to understand the modern world, then you have to know a little bit of the mathematical language spoken by intelligent machines. AIQ will teach you that language—but in an unconventional way, anchored in stories rather than equations. You will meet a fascinating cast of historical characters who have a lot to teach you about data, probability, and better thinking. Along the way, you'll see how these same ideas are playing out in the modern age of big data and intelligent machines—and how these technologies will soon help you to overcome some of your built-in cognitive weaknesses, giving you a chance to lead a happier, healthier, more fulfilled life.
Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality
Bill Kilday - 2018
While a contract with the CIA kept them afloat, the company’s big break came with the first invasion of Iraq; CNN used their technology to cover the war and made it famous. Then Google came on the scene, buying the company and relaunching the software as Google Maps and Google Earth. Eventually, Hanke’s original company was spun back out of Google, and is now responsible for Pokémon GO and the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.Kilday, the marketing director for Keyhole and Google Maps, was there from the earliest days, and offers a personal look behind the scenes at the tech and the minds developing it. But this book isn’t only a look back at the past; it is also a glimpse of what’s to come. Kilday reveals how emerging map-based technologies including virtual reality and driverless cars are going to upend our lives once again.Never Lost Again shows us how our worldview changed dramatically as a result of vision, imagination, and implementation. It’s a crazy story. And it all started with a really good map.
Future Ethics
Cennydd Bowles - 2018
Technology was never neutral; its social, political, and moral impacts have become painfully clear. But the stakes will only get higher as connected cameras will watch over the city, algorithms oversee society’s most critical decisions, and transport, jobs, and even war will become automated. The tech industry hasn’t yet earned the trust these technologies demand. Based on Cennydd’s years of research and consulting, Future Ethics transforms modern ethical theory into practical advice for designers, product managers, and software engineers alike. Cennydd uses the three lenses of modern ethics to focus on some of the tech industry’s biggest challenges: unintended consequences and algorithmic bias, the troubling power of persuasive technology, and the dystopias of surveillance, autonomous war, and a post-work future. Future Ethics is an intelligent, quietly provocative book that challenges technologists to stand up for change, and teaches essential ethical principles and methods for building a fairer future. Cennydd Bowles is a London-based designer and writer with fifteen years of experience and clients including Twitter, Ford, Cisco, and the BBC. His focus today is the ethics of emerging technology. He has lectured on the topic at Carnegie Mellon University, Google, and New York’s School of Visual Arts, and is a sought-after speaker at technology and design events worldwide.
SUNBURST and LUMINARY - An Apollo Memoir
Don Eyles - 2018
His assignment is to program the complex lunar landing phase in the Lunar Module's onboard computer. As he masters his art the reader learns about the computer, the mission, and a bit about spacecraft navigation and meets a cast of interesting characters along the way. As Apollo 11 approaches, the author flies lunar landings in simulators and meets the astronauts who will fly the LM for real. He explains the computer alarms that almost prevented Neil Armstrong from landing and describes a narrow escape from another dangerous problem. He helps Pete Conrad achieve a pinpoint landing on Apollo 12, and works with Apollo 16 commander John Young on a technique for landing even more precisely. On Apollo 14 he devises a workaround when a faulty pushbutton threatens Alan Shepard's mission, earning a NASA award, a story in Rolling Stone, and a few lines in the history books. Along the way the author hits the high points of his eclectic personal life, as he enters adulthood in the 1960s. He writes for students of the Apollo project, for whom the development of the flight software is still largely unexplored territory, but also for the young coders of the current digital culture, who will get the author's observations on the art of programming and who may identify as he explores sex, drugs, and the other excitements of the era. The underlying thesis is that the American space program in the 1960s was successful not in spite of, but in large measure because of the idealism, the freedom of thought, and the sense of exploration, inner and outer, that prevailed in the culture during that period. The memoir concludes in a party atmosphere at the spectacular night launch of Apollo 17 before a glittery crowd an occasion that marked the high water mark, so far, of human space exploration.
The Hacker Playbook 3: Practical Guide To Penetration Testing
Peter Kim - 2018
With a combination of new strategies, attacks, exploits, tips and tricks, you will be able to put yourself in the center of the action toward victory. The main purpose of this book is to answer questions as to why things are still broken. For instance, with all the different security products, secure code reviews, defense in depth, and penetration testing requirements, how are we still seeing massive security breaches happening to major corporations and governments? The real question we need to ask ourselves is, are all the safeguards we are putting in place working? This is what The Hacker Playbook 3 - Red Team Edition is all about. By now, we are all familiar with penetration testing, but what exactly is a Red Team? Red Teams simulate real-world, advanced attacks to test how well your organization's defensive teams respond if you were breached. They find the answers to questions like: Do your incident response teams have the right tools, skill sets, and people to detect and mitigate these attacks? How long would it take them to perform these tasks and is it adequate? This is where you, as a Red Teamer, come in to accurately test and validate the overall security program. THP3 will take your offensive hacking skills, thought processes, and attack paths to the next level. This book focuses on real-world campaigns and attacks, exposing you to different initial entry points, exploitation, custom malware, persistence, and lateral movement--all without getting caught! This heavily lab-based book will include multiple Virtual Machines, testing environments, and custom THP tools. So grab your helmet and let's go break things! For more information, visit http://thehackerplaybook.com/about/.
CSS in Depth
Keith J. Grant - 2018
This instantly useful book is packed with creative examples and powerful best practices that will sharpen your technical skills and inspire your sense of design.Foreword by Chris Coyier, Cofounder of CodePen.Dig even deeper into the secrets of CSS with our video course CSS in Depth in Motion, available exclusively at Manning.com (www.manning.com/livevideo/css-in-dept...)!Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.About the TechnologySome websites really pop. They look great, they're visually consistent, and they feel interactive and responsive. You can bet their developers knew CSS in depth. CSS specifies everything from the structural layout of page elements to their individual look and feel. True masters know the patterns of CSS development, the techniques to implement them, and the subtle touches that result in beautiful typography, fluid transitions, and balanced graphics. Join them!About the BookCSS in Depth exposes you to a world of CSS techniques that range from clever to mind-blowing. This instantly useful book is packed with creative examples and powerful best practices that will sharpen your technical skills and inspire your sense of design. You'll gain new insights into familiar features like floats and units, and experiment with emerging ideas like responsive design and pattern libraries. Bottom line: this book will make you a better web designer and your apps will look fantastic!What's InsideAvoid common CSS pitfallsMaster misunderstood conceptsUse flexbox and grid layoutResponsive designs for any deviceCode for reuse and maintainabilityAbout the ReaderWritten for web developers who know the basics of CSS and HTML.About the AuthorKeith J. Grant is a senior web developer who builds and maintains web applications and websites, including The New York Stock Exchange site.Table of ContentsPART 1 - REVIEWING THE FUNDAMENTALSCascade, specificity, and inheritanceWorking with relative unitsMastering the box modelPART 2 - MASTERING LAYOUTMaking sense of floatsFlexboxGrid layoutPositioning and stacking contextsResponsive designPART 3 - CSS AT SCALEModular CSSPattern librariesPART 4 - ADVANCED TOPICSBackgrounds, shadows, and blend modesContrast, color, and spacingTypographyTransitionsTransformsAnimations
Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it
Martin Ford - 2018
of Toronto and Google), Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics), Yann LeCun (Facebook) , Fei-Fei Li (Stanford and Google), Yoshua Bengio (Univ. of Montreal), Andrew Ng (AI Fund), Daphne Koller (Stanford), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), Nick Bostrom (Univ. of Oxford), Barbara Grosz (Harvard), David Ferrucci (Elemental Cognition), James Manyika (McKinsey), Judea Pearl (UCLA), Josh Tenenbaum (MIT), Rana el Kaliouby (Affectiva), Daniela Rus (MIT), Jeff Dean (Google), Cynthia Breazeal (MIT), Oren Etzioni (Allen Institute for AI), Gary Marcus (NYU), and Bryan Johnson (Kernel).Martin Ford is a prominent futurist, and author of Financial Times Business Book of the Year, Rise of the Robots. He speaks at conferences and companies around the world on what AI and automation might mean for the future. Editorial reviews: "In his newest book, Architects of Intelligence, Martin Ford provides us with an invaluable opportunity to learn from some of the most prominent thought leaders about the emerging fields of science that are shaping our future."
-Al Gore, Former Vice President of the US
"AI is going to shape our future, and Architects of Intelligence offers a unique and fascinating collection of perspectives from the top researchers and entrepreneurs who are driving progress in the field."
- Eric Schmidt, former Chairman and CEO, Google
"The best way to understand the challenges and consequences of AGI is to see inside the minds of industry experts shaping the field. Architects of Intelligence gives you that power."
-Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI
"Architects of Intelligence gets you inside the minds of the people building the technology that is going to transform our world. This is a book that everyone should read."
-Reid Hoffman, Co-founder of LinkedIn
Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do about It
Chris Clearfield - 2018
This is a wonderful book."--Charles Duhigg, author of
The Power of Habit
and
Smarter Faster Better
A crash on the Washington, D.C. metro system. An accidental overdose in a state-of-the-art hospital. An overcooked holiday meal. At first glance, these disasters seem to have little in common. But surprising new research shows that all these events--and the myriad failures that dominate headlines every day--share similar causes. By understanding what lies behind these failures, we can design better systems, make our teams more productive, and transform how we make decisions at work and at home.Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the frontlines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and Andras Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns--and even to corruption and misconduct.But Meltdown isn't just about failure; it's about solutions--whether you're managing a team or the chaos of your family's morning routine. It reveals why ugly designs make us safer, how a five-minute exercise can prevent billion-dollar catastrophes, why teams with fewer experts are better at managing risk, and why diversity is one of our best safeguards against failure. The result is an eye-opening, empowering, and entirely original book--one that will change the way you see our complex world and your own place in it.
Robots and Drones: Past, Present, and Future
Mairghread Scott - 2018
These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty year old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley
Emily Chang - 2018
It's a "Brotopia," where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties.In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don't Be Evil! Connect the World!)--and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Interviews with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer--who got their start at Google, where just one in five engineers is a woman--reveal just how hard it is to crack the Silicon Ceiling. And Chang shows how women such as former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, entrepreneur Niniane Wang, and game developer Brianna Wu, have risked their careers and sometimes their lives to pave a way for other women.Silicon Valley's aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. It's time to break up the boys' club. Emily Chang shows us how to fix this toxic culture--to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.
Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World
Paul Shapiro - 2018
From the entrepreneurial visionaries to the scientists’ workshops to the big business boardrooms—Shapiro details that quest for clean meat and other animal products and examines the debate raging around it.Since the dawn of Homo sapiens some quarter million years ago, animals have satiated our species’ desire for meat. But with a growing global population and demand for meat, eggs, dairy, leather, and more, raising such massive numbers of farm animals is woefully inefficient and takes an enormous toll on the planet, public health, and certainly the animals themselves. But what if we could have our meat and eat it, too? The next great scientific revolution is underway—discovering new ways to create enough food for the world’s ever-growing, ever-hungry population. Enter clean meat—real, actual meat grown (or brewed!) from animal cells—as well as other clean foods that ditch animal cells altogether and are simply built from the molecule up. Also called lab-grown meat, cultured meat, or cell-based meat, this race promises promise to bring about another domestication. Whereas our ancestors domesticated wild animals into livestock, today we’re beginning to domesticate their cells, leaving the animals out of the equation. From one single cell of a cow, you could feed an entire village. And the story of this coming “second domestication” is anything but tame.
Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
Varun Sivaram - 2018
What's more, its potential is nearly limitless--every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim.Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram explains, drawing on firsthand experience and original research spanning science, business, and government. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today's solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world's power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun's unreliable energy.Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio. Although solar can't power the planet by itself, it can be the centerpiece of a global clean energy revolution.A Council on Foreign Relations Book
Thou Shalt Innovate: How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World
Avi Jorisch - 2018
This is the story of how Israelis are helping to feed the hungry, cure the sick, protect the defenseless, and make the desert bloom. Israel is playing a disproportionate role in helping solve some of the world s biggest challenges by tapping into the nation's soul: the spirit of tikkun olam the Jewish concept of repairing the world. Following Start-Up Nation's account of Israel's incredibly prolific start-up scene, Thou Shalt Innovate tells the story of how Israeli innovation is making the whole world a better place. Israel has extraordinary innovators who are bound together by their desire to save lives and find higher purpose. In a part of the world that has more than its share of darkness, these stories are rays of light. What people are saying about Thou Shalt Innovate: Thou Shalt Innovate gives the reader a refreshing glimpse at Israel's greatest natural resource, her people. It is no coincidence that the Hebrew prophet Isaiah prophesied they would be a light unto the nations. Susan M. Michael, US Director, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem Want to understand the Israel of today, the nation that leads the world in problem solving? Thou shalt read Thou Shalt Innovate! Seth M. Siegel, author, New York Times best seller Let There Be Water Thou Shalt Innovate is a book the world needs to pay attention to. In a rich and exhilarating narrative, Avi Jorisch outlines the roadmap for how Israelis innovate while making the world a better place, and how other countries and people can follow suit. Yaakov Katz, Editor in Chief, Jerusalem Post; co-author, The Weapon Wizards
Getting Clojure
Russ Olsen - 2018
The vision behind Clojure is of a radically simple language framework holding together a sophisticated collection of programming features. Learning Clojure involves much more than just learning the mechanics of the language. To really get Clojure you need to understand the ideas underlying this structure of framework and features. You need this book: an accessible introduction to Clojure that focuses on the ideas behind the language as well as the practical details of writing code.
Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics
Yochai Benkler - 2018
It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives.Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment.The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.
Democracy Hacked: Political Turmoil and Information Warfare in the Digital Age
Martin Moore - 2018
Authoritarian governments, moneyed elites and fringe hackers are exploiting our digital infrastructure and the vulnerabilities in our democratic system to influence our politics and elections. In just a few years, it has become a perpetual information war.Inherently unstable and prone to wild volatility, our digital ecosystem has at its heart a vacuum open to the influence of those with the motivation, money or expertise to exploit it. Played successfully it can lead to unprecedented swings of public opinion.Martin Moore explains how hackers interfere in our democratic processes, why they can do it and outlines what we need to do to save democracy for the digital age. This is a story about active measures, data mining, psy-ops, mercenaries, microtargeting, the alt-right, plutocrats, the collapse of local news, Silicon Valley, Trump, trolling, surveillance – and you.
Beyond The Phoenix Project: The Origins and Evolution Of DevOps (Official Transcript of The Audio Series)
Gene Kim - 2018
In this transcript of the audio series, Gene Kim and John Willis present a nine-part discussion that includes an oral history of the DevOps movement, as well as discussions around pivotal figures and philosophies that DevOps draws upon, from Goldratt to Deming; from Lean to Safety Culture to Learning Organizations.The book is a great way for listeners to take an even deeper dive into topics relevant to DevOps and leading technology organizations.
Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech
Cyrus Farivar - 2018
That means all of the technologies that have made our lives easier, faster, better, and/or more efficient have also simultaneously made it easier to keep an eye on our activities. Or, as we recently learned from reports about Cambridge Analytica, our data might be turned into a propaganda machine against us. In 10 crucial legal cases, Habeas Data explores the tools of surveillance that exist today, how they work, and what the implications are for the future of privacy.
Augmented
Anthony James - 2018
Deep underground, something waits. It’s hostile and immune to every known weapon. Its arrival threatens much more than this single planet. What begins as a standard in-out mission leads to warfare on a galactic scale and a confrontation between two well-armed fleets. Keller is the best spaceship pilot in the Corps and Nation has his own unique skills. They’re going to have a hard time turning this situation into a positive. Augmented is a high-action science fiction adventure involving massive space battles, overwhelming odds and new technologies. It is the first book in the Transcended series. Book 2: Fleet Vanguard is available now.
Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy
James Williams - 2018
As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access.
Beyond Blockchain: The Death of the Dollar and the Rise of Digital Currency
Erik Townsend - 2018
Blockchain is suddenly everyone’s favorite buzzword. But what if there’s more to this story than meets the eye? What if Digital Currency is about to change the world in ways beyond our imagination? And what if geopolitical forces our politicians don’t even understand have already inspired China and Russia to use Digital Currency to attack the U.S. Dollar’s dominance over the global financial system? The Dollar has served as the world’s reserve currency since 1944, and the fringe benefits have allowed the U.S. Government to borrow and spend beyond its means and run massive trade deficits for decades. Now China and Russia suddenly have a new lever to use which could upset the global balance of power. Who would have guessed that technology breakthroughs conceived by the inventors of cryptocurrency would hand China and Russia just the weapon they needed to attack the Dollar’s rule over the global economy? The invention of digital cash enables government-issued digital currency systems that could completely modernize the global monetary system. The potential benefits to society are so great that it’s hard to grasp their full magnitude. But a digital currency system introduced by China and Russia could upstage the Dollar and replace it as global reserve currency, causing devastating consequences for the U.S. economy. Which country wins the new digital currency Space Race could change the course of human history. There’s plenty of evidence that China and Russia are already hard at work. The Chinese central bank is aggressively hiring Blockchain engineers, but has been suspiciously quiet about what they’re working on. Sergei Glaziev, economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin is giving keynote speeches to Blockchain conferences. The Chinese central bank filed more digital currency patents than anyone else in 2017. This book explains why China and Russia are suddenly so interested in Digital Currency technology, and more importantly, what they plan to do with it. Time is short for the U.S. Government to wake up and recognize the threat that now looms over the U.S. Dollar’s dominance at the center of the global financial system, and why Digital Currency technology is likely to be the challengers’ weapon of choice to defeat the Dollar. Author Erik Townsend is uniquely qualified to sort this puzzle out and tell the entire fascinating story. In his first career, Townsend was a distributed systems architect – an expert in all the technologies used to create cryptocurrencies. In his second career, he was a hedge fund manager who studied reserve currency status extensively. Townsend first gives readers an introduction to both conventional money and digital currency, then gives a detailed introduction to relevant monetary history subjects, and finally ties it all together and explains how a state-sponsored digital currency system could steal the title of global reserve currency from the U.S. Dollar and change the balance of world power.
ASP.NET Core in Action
Andrew Lock - 2018
ASP.NET Core is a re-imagining of the .NET Framework that frees developers from Visual Studio and Windows.ASP.NET Core in Action is for C# developers without any web development experience who want to get started and productive using ASP.NET Core to build web applications.
Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
Virginia Eubanks - 2018
In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect.Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems—rather than humans—control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor.In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile.The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values.This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.Naomi Klein: "This book is downright scary."Ethan Zuckerman, MIT: "Should be required reading."Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: "A must-read for everyone concerned about modern tools of inequality in America."Astra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: "This is the single most important book about technology you will read this year."
Where Is My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past
J. Storrs Hall - 2018
Were the futurists and SF writers of the day just wrong? Or has something more interesting and important happened? Will we ever get flying cars? This book offers a compelling analysis of the past and a surprising view of the future.
Google Apps for Littles: Believe They Can
Christine Pinto - 2018
They love to explore and play, in fact, that’s how they learn. That innate drive to discover and willingness to try is also what makes Littles great at embracing new opportunities. In Google Apps for Littles, author-educators Christine Pinto and Alice Keeler encourage teachers to tap into their young students’ curiosity, particularly when it comes to technology. The authors share a wealth of innovative ways to integrate digital tools in the primary classroom to make learning engaging and relevant for even the youngest of today’s twenty-first-century learners. Google Apps for Littles equips you with . . . Practical ways to approach technology with young learners Activities for integrating Google Apps in the primary classroom Easy-to-implement ideas for using G Suite as an educator Exercises that build important skills, such as critical thinking and collaboration Children already know that they don’t need to wait for a grown-up to give them information, and many are already familiar with smartphones and tables. By helping them understand how to use these amazing digital tools to learn and create, rather than just consume information, you are equipping them for their future education. Empower your Littles with experiences that place learning at their fingertips! It is time to shift your mindset and believe that the youngest kids on an elementary school campus can do more. “Google Apps for Littles is jam packed with practical and innovative ideas and projects you can use with you littles tomorrow!” —Eric Curts, ControlAltAchieve.com “Inside this book, created by the dynamic duo of Alice Keeler and Christine Pinto, you will find nothing short of transformation. No matter what grade you teach, you will gain new ideas and insight by reading this book. Add this book to your reading list now!” —Kasey Bell, ShakeUpLearning.com “I love this all-encompassing guide to support teachers and students. Awesome!” —Lavonna Roth, creator and founder of Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.® #GAfE4Littles
Predator Rising: How a Team of Renegades Broke Rules, Shattered Barriers, and Launched a Drone Warfare Revolution
Alec Bierbauer - 2018
Predator Rising is the character-driven story behind the origins of the Predator drone program and the dawn of unmanned warfare. A firsthand account told by an Air Force team leader and a CIA team leader, Predator Rising takes the reader into the back offices and secret government hangars where the robotic revolution went from a mad scientist idea to a pivotal part of global air power.The story will reveal the often conflicting perspectives between the defense and intelligence communities and put you inside places like the CIA’s counterterrorism center on the morning of 9/11. Through the eyes of the men and women who lived it, you will experience the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the evolution of a program from passive surveillance to the complex hunter-killers that hang above the battlespace like ghosts. Poised at the junction between The Right Stuff and The Bourne Identity, Predator Rising will document the way a group of cowboys, rogues, and bandits broke rules and defied convention to change the shape of modern warfare.
The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity
Byron Reese - 2018
will mean for us, it also forces readers to challenge their preconceptions. And it manages to do all this in a way that is both entertaining and engaging.” —The New York Times As we approach a great turning point in history when technology is poised to redefine what it means to be human, The Fourth Age offers fascinating insight into AI, robotics, and their extraordinary implications for our species.In The Fourth Age, Byron Reese makes the case that technology has reshaped humanity just three times in history: - 100,000 years ago, we harnessed fire, which led to language. - 10,000 years ago, we developed agriculture, which led to cities and warfare. - 5,000 years ago, we invented the wheel and writing, which lead to the nation state. We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how—rather than what—we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity. By asking questions like “Are you a machine?” and “Could a computer feel anything?”, Reese leads you through a discussion along the cutting edge in robotics and AI, and, provides a framework by which we can all understand, discuss, and act on the issues of the Fourth Age, and how they’ll transform humanity.
The Story of the Blockchain: A Beginner's Guide to the Technology Nobody Understands
Omid Malekan - 2018
It has the potential to revolutionize money and banking while wrestling the rest of the internet away from today's gatekeepers. But it’s notoriously hard to understand, as most of the existing explanations are either too technical or too ideological. The Story of the Blockchain is a book written for the rest of us. Using a series of anecdotes from everyday life and analogies from more relatable areas, Omid Malekan takes you back to the very beginning, walking you through why this technology was invented in the first place, how it’s being utilized today, and why it might eventually impact everything. Each chapter covers a unique aspect of this frontier technology, like privacy, initial coin offerings or what it's like to be invested in the coins themselves, but the overall book still flows like an easy to follow story, one that ends with a simple tutorial on how to safely make your first cryptocoin transactions. When all is said and done, you won't just understand this revolution. You'll be a part of it.
Spark: The Definitive Guide: Big Data Processing Made Simple
Bill Chambers - 2018
With an emphasis on improvements and new features in Spark 2.0, authors Bill Chambers and Matei Zaharia break down Spark topics into distinct sections, each with unique goals.
You’ll explore the basic operations and common functions of Spark’s structured APIs, as well as Structured Streaming, a new high-level API for building end-to-end streaming applications. Developers and system administrators will learn the fundamentals of monitoring, tuning, and debugging Spark, and explore machine learning techniques and scenarios for employing MLlib, Spark’s scalable machine-learning library.
Get a gentle overview of big data and Spark
Learn about DataFrames, SQL, and Datasets—Spark’s core APIs—through worked examples
Dive into Spark’s low-level APIs, RDDs, and execution of SQL and DataFrames
Understand how Spark runs on a cluster
Debug, monitor, and tune Spark clusters and applications
Learn the power of Structured Streaming, Spark’s stream-processing engine
Learn how you can apply MLlib to a variety of problems, including classification or recommendation
Ninja Foodi: The Pressure Cooker that Crisps: Complete Cookbook for Beginners: Your Expert Guide to Pressure Cook, Air Fry, Dehydrate, and More
Kenzie Swanhart - 2018
Here, in the official Ninja® Foodi™ Complete Cookbook for Beginners, you’ll find easy, flavorful recipes specifically designed for the innovative technology of the Ninja® Foodi™.No matter what you’re in the mood for, there’s a wide range of versatile recipes in Ninja® Foodi™ Complete Cookbook for Beginners. From wholesome “360 Meals” that allow you to fully cook grains, crisp vegetables, and tender proteins all in the same pot, to time-saving “Frozen to Crispy” recipes that allow you to cook frozen food without defrosting it first, the Ninja® Foodi™ Complete Cookbook for Beginners puts tasty, nourishing meals on the table in no time.The ultimate beginner’s guide for using this one-of-a-kind appliance, the Ninja® Foodi™ Complete Cookbook for Beginners includes:
75 quick, tasty, good-for-you recipes that include options not only for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but also appetizers, breads, desserts, and more
Quick-start guidance for using your Ninja® Foodi™ and understanding all of its unique features such as how to pressure cook, air fry, TenderCrisp™, dehydrate, and more
Expert tips and tricks that will eliminate the learning curve regardless of your prior culinary experience
There is no dinner dilemma that the Ninja® Foodi™ can’t handle. And with the official Ninja® Foodi™ Complete Cookbook for Beginners, there’s no recipe that you can’t cook.
Driving Digital Strategy: A Guide to Reimagining Your Business
Sunil Gupta - 2018
Best Buy has transformed its business in the face of Amazon's threat. John Deere has formed a data-analysis arm to complement its farm-equipment business. And Goldman Sachs and many others are using digital technologies to reimagine their businesses. In Driving Digital Strategy, Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta provides an actionable framework for following their lead.For over a decade, Gupta has studied digital transformation at Fortune 500 companies. He knows what works and what doesn't. Merely dabbling in digital or launching a small independent unit, which many companies do, will not bring success. Instead you need to fundamentally change the core of your business and ensure that your digital strategy touches all aspects of your organization: your business model, value chain, customer relationships, and company culture. Gupta covers each aspect in vivid detail while providing navigation tips and best practices along the way.Filled with rich and illuminating case studies of companies at the forefront of digital transformation, Driving Digital Strategy is the comprehensive guide you need to take full advantage of the limitless opportunities the digital age provides.
Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
Jamie Susskind - 2018
Those who control the most powerful technologies are increasingly able to control the rest of us. As time goes on, these powerful entities - usually bigtech firms and the state - will set the limits of our liberty, decreeing what may be done and what is forbidden. Their algorithms will determine vital questions of social justice. In their hands, democracy will flourish or decay.A landmark work of political theory, Future Politics challenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and what it means for a political system to be just or democratic. In a time of rapid and relentless changes, it is a book about how we can -and must - regain control.Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize.
Writing A Compiler In Go
Thorsten Ball - 2018
We're picking up right where we left off and write a compiler and a virtual machine for Monkey. Runnable and tested code front and center, built from the ground up, step by step — just like before. But this time, we're going to define bytecode, compile Monkey and execute it in our very own virtual machine. It's the next step in Monkey's evolution. It's the sequel to … a programming language Writing A Compiler In Go is the sequel to Writing An Interpreter In Go. It starts right where the first one stopped, with a fully-working, fully-tested Monkey interpreter in hand, connecting both books seamlessly, ready to build a compiler and a virtual machine for Monkey. In this book, we use the codebase (included in the book!) from the first part and extend it. We take the lexer, the parser, the AST, the REPL and the object system and use them to build a new, faster implementation of Monkey, right next to the tree-walking evaluator we built in the first book. The approach is unchanged, too. Working, tested code is the focus, we build everything from scratch, do baby steps, write tests firsts, use no 3rd-party-libraries and see and understand how all the pieces fit together. It's a continuation in prose and in code. Do you need to read the first part before this one? If you're okay with treating the code from the first book as black box, then no. But that's not what these books are about; they're about opening up black boxes, looking inside and shining a light. You'll have the best understanding of where we're going in this book, if you know where we started. Learn how to write a compiler and a virtual machine Our main goal in in this book is to evolve Monkey. We change its architecture and turn it into a bytecode compiler and virtual machine. We'll take the lexer, the parser, the AST and the object system we wrote in the first book and use them to build our own Monkey compiler and virtual machine … from scratch! We'll build them side-by-side so that we'll always have a running system we can steadily evolve. What we end up with is not only much closer to the programming languages we use every day, giving us a better understanding of how they work, but also 3x faster. And that's without explicitly aiming for performance. Here's what we'll do: - We define our own bytecode instructions, specifying their operands and their encoding. Along the way, we also build a mini-disassembler for them. - We write a compiler that takes in a Monkey AST and turns it into bytecode by emitting instructions - At the same time we build a stack-based virtual machine that executes the bytecode in its main loop We'll learn a lot about computers, how they work, what machine code and opcodes are, what the stack is and how to work with stack pointers and frame pointers, what it means to define a calling convention, and much more. We also - build a symbol table and a constant pool - do stack arithmetic - generate jump instructions - build frames into our VM to execute functions with local bindings and arguments! - add built-in functions to the VM - get real closures working in the virtual machine and learn why closure-compilation is so tricky
Confident Data Skills: Master the Fundamentals of Working with Data and Supercharge Your Career
Kirill Eremenko - 2018
From entertainment to politics, from technology to advertising and from science to the business world, understanding and using data is now one of the most transferable and transferable skills out there. Learning how to work with data may seem intimidating or difficult but with
Confident Data Skills
you will be able to master the fundamentals and supercharge your professional abilities. This essential book covers data mining, preparing data, analysing data, communicating data, financial modelling, visualizing insights and presenting data through film making and dynamic simulations.In-depth international case studies from a wide range of organizations, including Netflix, LinkedIn, Goodreads, Deep Blue, Alpha Go and Mike's Hard Lemonade Co. show successful data techniques in practice and inspire you to turn knowledge into innovation.
Confident Data Skills
also provides insightful guidance on how you can use data skills to enhance your employability and improve how your industry or company works through your data skills. Expert author and instructor, Kirill Eremenko, is committed to making the complex simple and inspiring you to have the confidence to develop an understanding, adeptness and love of data.
The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honesty and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results
Todd Caponi - 2018
Are you ready for it?
Buyers today have knowledge at their fingertips and most of their information gathering will routinely happen before you even walk through the door or get them on the phone. Armed with information, their guard is up – and they are skeptical. Today, anyone buying anything relies on reviews and feedback shared by strangers and often trust those anonymously posted experiences more than the claims made by the providers of the products or services themselves. They expect to see the full picture and find out all of the pros and cons before making any purchase. And the larger the purchase, the greater the demand for transparency.
What if the key to selling was to do exactly the opposite of what most sales courses tell you to do?
It may be hard to imagine, but something as counterintuitive as leading with your flaws can result in faster sales cycles, increased win rates, and makes competing with you almost impossible. Leveraging transparency and vulnerability in your presentations and your negotiations leads to faster buyer consensus, larger deals, faster payments, longer commitments and more predictable sales forecasts. In this groundbreaking book, award winning sales leader Todd Caponi will reveal his hard-earned secrets for engaging potential buyers with unexpected honesty and understanding the buying brain to get the deal you want, while delighting your customer with the experience.
Elon Musk: The Unauthorized Autobiography
J.T. Owens - 2018
One of the world's most successful and daring entrepreneurs, who is not only trying to redefine transportation on Earth and in space, but is also on the forefront of moving humanity towards a sustainable future. Learn about the history of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, PayPal, OpenAI and more...
Digital Darwinism: Survival of the Fittest in the Age of Business Disruption
Tom Goodwin - 2018
Change is happening faster than ever and the pace is accelerating.The lifespan of companies decreasing and the list of case studies of those that failed to adapt grows longer by the week. Life seems more unpredictable than ever, we face a growing abundance of data to process, more decisions to make and new technologies that promise to be the next big thing. In this book Tom Goodwin aims to provide CEO's and Business Executives across all industries with leadership through change. A guiding hand through through the turbulence of the moment, a way to reimagine business and products leveraging the profound new opportunities that new technology, new behaviors and new thinking allow. This is a practical guide, drawing on the past, with clear actionable steps on how leaders for the future can thrive today and tomorrow.
Carbon Capture
Howard J. Herzog - 2018
Carbon capture offers a path to climate change mitigation that has received relatively little attention. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Howard Herzog offers a concise guide to carbon capture, covering basic information as well as the larger context of climate technology and policy. Carbon capture, or carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), refers to a suite of technologies that reduce CO2 emissions by “capturing” CO2 before it is released into the atmosphere and then transporting it to where it will be stored or used. It is the only climate change mitigation technique that deals directly with fossil fuels rather than providing alternatives to them.Herzog, a pioneer in carbon capture research, begins by discussing the fundamentals of climate change and how carbon capture can be one of the solutions. He explains capture and storage technologies, including chemical scrubbing and the injection of CO2 deep underground. He reports on current efforts to deploy CCS at factories and power plants and attempts to capture CO2 from the air itself. Finally, he explores the policies and politics in play around CCS and argues for elevating carbon capture in the policy agenda.
Thirty-Three Days
Stephen B. King - 2018
A young microbiologist is going to release a genetically modified wheat that will mutate and ultimately destroy all plant life, leaving nothing but barren windswept dust bowls. In the past, Jenny finds a love that has been missing from her life; the kind that comes just once in a lifetime. But Jenny can only stay in that time period for thirty-three days. Meanwhile, in the future, fearful Jenny will fail, plans are made to send another back in time--an assassin. How can she choose between saving the man she loves or saving the future?
Java by Comparison: Become a Java Craftsman in 70 Examples
Simon Harrer - 2018
How Smart Machines Think
Sean Gerrish - 2018
But how do all these things work? In this book, Sean Gerrish offers an engaging and accessible overview of the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning that have made today's machines so smart.Gerrish outlines some of the key ideas that enable intelligent machines to perceive and interact with the world. He describes the software architecture that allows self-driving cars to stay on the road and to navigate crowded urban environments; the million-dollar Netflix competition for a better recommendation engine (which had an unexpected ending); and how programmers trained computers to perform certain behaviors by offering them treats, as if they were training a dog. He explains how artificial neural networks enable computers to perceive the world—and to play Atari video games better than humans. He explains Watson's famous victory on Jeopardy, and he looks at how computers play games, describing AlphaGo and Deep Blue, which beat reigning world champions at the strategy games of Go and chess. Computers have not yet mastered everything, however; Gerrish outlines the difficulties in creating intelligent agents that can successfully play video games like StarCraft that have evaded solution—at least for now.Gerrish weaves the stories behind these breakthroughs into the narrative, introducing readers to many of the researchers involved, and keeping technical details to a minimum. Science and technology buffs will find this book an essential guide to a future in which machines can outsmart people.
My Product Management Toolkit: Tools and Techniques to Become an Outstanding Product Manager
Marc Abraham - 2018
Written by successful product manager Marc Abraham, My Product Management Toolkit is a comprehensive guide to developing a physical or digital product that consumers love. Here’s a sample of what you’ll find within these pages: Strategies for determining what customers want—even when they don’t know themselves Clear suggestions for developing both physical and digital products Effective methods to constantly iterate a product or feature Containing wisdom from Abraham’s popular blog, this book explores product management from every angle, including consumer analysis, personnel management, and product evolution. Whether you’re developing a product for a small start-up or a multinational corporation, this book will prove invaluable.
Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches
Donald W. Jones - 2018
This updated edition covers PowerShell features that run on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, PowerShell v3 and later, and includes v5 features like PowerShellGet. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology PowerShell is both a scripting language and an administrative shell that lets you control and automate nearly every aspect of Windows. It accepts and executes commands interactively and you can write scripts to manage most Windows servers like Exchange, IIS, and SharePoint, as well as online services like Azure and Office 365. About the Book Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Third Edition is an innovative tutorial designed for busy IT professionals. Just set aside one hour a day - lunchtime would be perfect - for a month, and you'll be automating Windows tasks faster than you ever thought possible. This updated edition covers PowerShell features that run on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, PowerShell v3 and later, and includes v5 features like PowerShellGet. What's Inside Learn PowerShell from the beginning, no experience required! Covers PowerShell v3 and up, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 and later Each lesson takes you an hour or less About the Reader Experience with Windows administration is helpful. No programming or scripting experience needed. About the Author Veteran PowerShell MVPs Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks bring years as successful trainers to this concise, easy-to-follow book.
The New And Improved Flask Mega-Tutorial
Miguel Grinberg - 2018
The tutorial has been thoroughly revised and expanded in 2017, now containing 23 chapters. The concepts that are covered go well beyond Flask, including a wide range of topics Python web developers need to know when writing their own applications.
Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions
SerHack - 2018
A Toy Drone for Christmas (DroneKing Trilogy Book 1)
Mary Jane Forbes - 2018
A marketing video gone viral. Will an inadvertent drone video expose her to a deadly foreclosure? Charley Kingman is desperate to prove herself to her wealthy father. After finally finding her niche as a real estate agent, she’s determined to get an edge in the cutthroat career. And when an incredibly cool drone video helps sell a "difficult" house in a single day, she knows she’s struck gold.As the drone venture grows and she meets Tavis, her brother’s handsome new business partner, Charley thinks her dreams have at long last come true. But after sinister, illegal activities come to light in her boss's real estate office, Charley and her new beau must act fast to avoid being caught in the crosshairs. With nowhere left to turn, can Charley and Tavis escape the deadly drug cartel’s clutches and give their love air space or are they fated to crash and burn?The Toy Drone is the first book in a trilogy of romantic cozy thrillers. If you like gutsy characters, workplace relationships, and tangled twists and turns, then you'll love Mary Jane Forbes’ intricate mystery.
Buy The Toy Drone to fly into a cozy romantic mystery today!
Digital China: Working with Bloggers, Influencers and KOLs
Lauren Hallanan - 2018
China is one of the most attractive markets in the world and collaborating with bloggers, KOLs and influencers is essential if you want to find a place in the consumer’s heart. Don’t know where to start? This book will help newcomers and experienced marketers alike gain insight and take action. You’ll learn about:
The Most Influential KOL Platforms and How They Work
How to Find and Select the Right Influencer for You
The Ins and Outs of Effective KOL Campaigns
KOLs in action: Revealing Case Studies
If you need a clearer understanding of one of the most dynamic marketing areas in China, this book is for you. Over her 12 year marketing career in China and Hong Kong, serial entrepreneur Ashley has plenty of social media savvy to share. As a writer and former influencer with 400,000 fans on Chinese social media, Lauren Hallanan has firsthand experience and valuable insider knowledge. Together, they deliver actionable tips and key insights into the world of influencers and opinion leaders in China. “Nowhere more than China, no time more than now, working with influencers isn't just important, it's critical. It sits at the convergence of the biggest trends of our times: commerce, technology, social media and trust. But with so many options and such intense competition, you need a guide. You're holding it now. Page by page, chapter by chapter, the opportunities and options will become clear. This book will open your eyes, save you time and map out a shortcut over a mountain of challenges and possibilities. You've found it.”— Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media Studios and author of Content Chemistry “China has taken the message of personal branding to heart, and has developed a powerful influencer market that's well worth understanding. This insightful book will show you opinion leadership, China style. In the early days of digital marketing, China learned from the U.S. Today, it's important for globally savvy marketers to learn from China.”— Dorie Clark, adjunct professor, Duke University Fuqua School of Business and author, Entrepreneurial You and Stand Out"To succeed in in reaching buyers online in the China market, you need to work with influencers. This book, packed with examples, will show you how."- David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and bestselling author of ten books including The New Rules of Marketing and PRDigital China: Working with Bloggers, Influencers and KOLs will help you to get the most from your cooperation with influencers in China. Don’t miss your chance to get ahead of the gameWhen you’re ready, scroll up and click ”Add to Cart” now!
Rest APIs with Django: Build Powerful Web APIs with Python and Django
William S. Vincent - 2018
You'll even learn how to connect them to a React front-end for a truly full-stack web application.TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction Chapter 1: Web APIs Chapter 2: Library website and API Chapter 3: Todo API Chapter 4: Todo React Frontend Chapter 5: Blog API Chapter 6: Permissions Chapter 7: User Authentication Chapter 8: Viewsets and Routers Chapter 9: Schemas and Documentation Conclusion
Doll-E 1.0
Shanda McCloskey - 2018
She's got a knack for anything technological--especially gadgets that her parents don't know how to fix! Then, she receives a new toy that is quite a puzzle: a doll! What's she supposed to do with that? Once she discovers the doll's hidden battery pack, things start to get interesting...while her faithful canine sidekick wonders if he'll be overshadowed by the new and improved Doll-E 1.0! With a little ingenuity and an open mind, everyone can be friends in this endearing, modern tribute to the creative spirit of play.
What Happens Next? Conversations from MARS
Adam Savage - 2018
In interviews with more than a dozen leading scientists and thinkers - including former astronaut Mike Massimino, iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks, Dava Newman (former deputy administrator of NASA), Oren Etzioni (CEO, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence), futurist Kate Compton, and Caleb Harper (director of the Open Agriculture initiative at MIT) - Savage explores the mind-blowing and often misunderstood ways in which science and innovation are transforming the way we live, work, and play.Full of wonder, optimism, and plain old awesomeness, What Happens Next will be a revelation for anyone who’s ever wondered about what our future will look like and how we’ll get there. 2 hours 50 minutes
The Secret History of Mac Gaming
Richard Moss - 2018
It made human–computer interaction friendly, inviting and intuitive.Mac gaming led to much that is now taken for granted by PC gamers and spawned some of the biggest franchises in video game history. It allowed anyone to create games and playful software with ease, and gave indie developers a home for their products.It welcomed strange ideas and encouraged experimentation. It fostered passionate and creative communities who inspired and challenged developers to do better and to follow the Mac mantra ‘think different’.Drawing on archive material and interviews with key figures from the era – and featuring new material from Craig Fryar, Apple’s first Mac games evangelist and the co-creator of hit game Spectre – The Secret History of Mac Gaming is the story of those communities and the game developers who survived and thrived in an ecosystem that was serially ignored by the outside world. It’s a book about people who followed their hearts first and market trends second, showing how clever, quirky, and downright wonderful video games could be.
BOOMING BRANDS– INSPIRING JOURNEYS OF 11’MADE IN INDIA’ BRANDS
Harsh Pamnani - 2018
Moreover, many marketing strategies that used to work in the past are becoming obsolete today. If you are looking for answers to burning questions such as: * How were new age admirable brands created from scratch? * How did these brands achieve popularity in a highly crowded and competitive market? * How did entrepreneurs behind these brands identif y new opportunities and create million-dollar markets? Then Booming Brands is a gold mine of information that you can’t afford to ignore. The lessons derived from the hard -earned success of these 11 Indian brands from multiple industries and domains, can help you carve out your own journey and brand strategy. Testimonials "Using journeys of remarkable Indian companies, Harsh Pamnani has written an interesting primer on brand building. A highly relevant read." - Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico "There are many 'Made in India' brands that are getting noticed at the global stage, but their journeys are mostly unnoticed. Harsh has done a great job by bringing together these journeys in form of referable case studies. Packed with wealth of ideas and learnings from diverse businesses, this book is an essential handbook for anyone interested in understanding how to create an admirable brand from scratch." -Ronnie Screwvala, Founder, UTV Group
101 Things I Learned in Engineering School
Matthew Frederick - 2018
An experienced civil engineer presents the physics and fundamentals underlying the many fields of engineering. Far from a dry, nuts-and-bolts exposition, 101 Things I Learned(R) in Engineering School uses real-world examples to show how the engineer's way of thinking can illuminate questions from the simple to the profound: Why shouldn't soldiers march across a bridge? Why do buildings want to float and cars want to fly? What is the difference between thinking systemically and thinking systematically? This informative resource will appeal to students, general readers, and even experienced engineers, who will discover within many provocative insights into familiar principles.
The Crypto Portfolio: a Commonsense Approach to Cryptocurrency Investing
Jonathan Hobbs - 2018
Some believe bitcoin and other cryptos will earn them massive investment returns for many years to come, and we are now at the forefront of the greatest wealth building opportunity in modern times. Others believe cryptos are in a wildly overvalued “bubble” that will probably pop tomorrow. Whatever happens, it’s safe to say there are risks involved—but with the right approach, much of those risks can be reduced without compromising on the potential for solid investment returns. In The Crypto Portfolio, Jonathan Hobbs, CFA, provides an informative guide for cryptocurrency investors of all levels. With his concise and jargon-free style, Hobbs simplifies the complex world of cryptocurrencies and arms you with practical steps to invest in them with less risk. In this book, you’ll learn: • Strategies, insights, and the mindset for effective investing—crypto or otherwise. • How blockchain works, and why it’s such a big deal. • The inner workings of cryptoassets like Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum and more. • How to safely store and exchange cryptocurrency. • Advanced areas of crypto investing, including ICOs and technical analysis. Don’t get consumed by the crypto hype in the news—nobody can predict the future. Instead, learn how to safely navigate this new, exciting and rapidly evolving asset class with The Crypto Portfolio. Pick up your copy today by clicking the button at the top of this page!
The Algorithm of Power
Pedro Barrento - 2018
by doing away with politics. To achieve those aims it counts on a formidable instrument: The Network, an operating system that will rule over the whole planet with chilling efficiency, despite its humble origins as a buggy strategy game developed by a geeky teenager.Split between the 21st and the 24th centuries The Algorithm of Power describes a future that is not democratic and where the government has no use for torture, gulags or a secret police - because no one even notices there is a government.But will it become Utopia or Dystopia?Welcome to the reign of software!
Google It: A History of Google
Anna Crowley Redding - 2018
Invent. Organize. Share. Don't be evil. And change the world.Larry Page and Sergey Brin started out as two Stanford college students with a wild idea: They were going to organize the world's information. From that one deceptively simple goal, they created one of the most influential and innovative companies in the world. The word “google” has even entered our vocabulary as a verb. Now, find out the true history of Google—from its humble beginnings as a thesis project made out of “borrowed” hardware and discount toys through its revolution of the world's relationship with technology to a brief glimpse of where they might take us next. In Google It, award-winning investigative reporter Anna Crowley Redding shares an inspiring story of innovation, personal and intellectual bravery, and most importantly, of shooting for the moon in order to change the world.
Technology Strategy Patterns: Architecture as Strategy
Eben Hewitt - 2018
This book’s toolkit provides architects, product managers, technology managers, and executives with a shared language—in the form of repeatable, practical patterns and templates—to produce great technology strategies.
Author Eben Hewitt developed 39 patterns over the course of a decade in his work as CTO, CIO, and chief architect for several global tech companies. With these proven tools, you can define, create, elaborate, refine, and communicate your architecture goals, plans, and approach in a way that executives can readily understand, approve, and execute.
This book covers:
Architecture and strategy: Adopt a strategic architectural mindset to make a meaningful material impact
Creating your strategy: Define the components of your technology strategy using proven patterns
Communicating the strategy: Convey your technology strategy in a compelling way to a variety of audiences
Bringing it all together: Employ patterns individually or in clusters for specific problems; use the complete framework for a comprehensive strategy
Beneath a Surface
Brad Sams - 2018
The company was forced to write-down $900 million in inventory and Surface’s future was in jeopardy.Beneath A Surface tells the inside story of how Microsoft turned its hardware dreams into a reality with new details about the challenges Panos and his team had to overcome as well as the internal politics that nearly killed the brand.For fans of Microsoft and those who are interested in the business of building brands, Beneath A Surface is a must read that tells the inside story of how Microsoft turned a failure into a fortune.
Cyber Smart: Five Habits to Protect Your Family, Money, and Identity from Cyber Criminals
Bart R. McDonough - 2018
Every new device and online service you use that improves your life also opens new doors for attackers looking to discover your passwords, banking accounts, personal photos, and anything else you want to keep secret. In Cyber Smart, author Bart McDonough uses his extensive cybersecurity experience speaking at conferences for the FBI, major financial institutions, and other clients to answer the most common question he hears: “How can I protect myself at home, on a personal level, away from the office?” McDonough knows cybersecurity and online privacy are daunting to the average person so Cyber Smart simplifies online good hygiene with five simple “Brilliance in the Basics” habits anyone can learn. With those habits and his careful debunking of common cybersecurity myths you’ll be able to protect yourself and your family from: Identify theft Compromising your children Lost money Lost access to email and social media accounts Digital security is one of the most important, and least understood, aspects of our daily lives. But it doesn’t have to be. Thanks to its clear instruction, friendly tone, and practical strategies, Cyber Smart will help you rest more easily, knowing you and your family are protected from digital attack.
The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
Nick Bostrom - 2018
For example, advances in DIY biohacking tools might make iteasy for anybody with basic training in biology to kill millions; novel military technologies couldtrigger arms races in which whoever strikes first has a decisive advantage; or some economicallyadvantageous process may be invented that produces disastrous negative global externalitiesthat are hard to regulate. This paper introduces the concept of a vulnerable world: roughly, onein which there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainlygets devastated by default, i.e. unless it has exited the “semi-anarchic default condition”. Severalcounterfactual historical and speculative future vulnerabilities are analyzed and arranged into atypology. A general ability to stabilize a vulnerable world would require greatly amplifiedcapacities for preventive policing and global governance. The vulnerable world hypothesis thusoffers a new perspective from which to evaluate the risk-benefit balance of developmentstowards ubiquitous surveillance or a unipolar world order.
She Engineers: Outsmart Bias, Unlock your Potential, and Create the Engineering Career of your Dreams
Stephanie Slocum - 2018
You love what you do. You are an influencer, a go-to person at your company and in your field. You aren’t working ridiculous hours. You have a life outside of work. You may even have a couple of young children if you so choose, while still enjoying a well-paying, impactful career in engineering.Sound like a pipe dream?It’s not. This book will show you how.As a fifteen-year engineering industry veteran and mom of 3, Stephanie Slocum uses a conversational and down-to-earth approach to teach you how to succeed as a female engineer:
How to determine your strengths and use them for maximum influence.
How to find your expert niche and use it to create the career (and life!) you deserve.
Why the well-meaning career advice given to male engineers backfires for women, and how you can avoid those traps.
How to have a career you love without sacrificing all your waking hours.
How to neutralize gender bias while maximizing your earning potential.
The one thing you must do to elevate your career to the next level.
Each chapter concludes with actions you can do in 30 minutes or less for immediate results. As a female engineer herself, she knows first-hand the value of your time and has packed her years of experience, stories, and lessons learned into one concise, easy-to-read resource for other female engineers.Don’t hesitate to pick up your copy today by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of this page!
Cyber Wars: Hacks that Shocked the Business World
Charles Arthur - 2018
These are the game changing hacks that make organizations around the world tremble and leaders stop and consider just how safe they really are. Charles Arthur provides a gripping account of why each hack happened, what techniques were used, what the consequences were and how they could have been prevented. Cyber attacks are some of the most frightening threats currently facing business leaders and this book provides a deep insight into understanding how they work, how hackers think as well as giving invaluable advice on staying vigilant and avoiding the security mistakes and oversights that can lead to downfall. No organization is safe but by understanding the context within which we now live and what the hacks of the future might look like, you can minimize the threat. In Cyber Wars, you will learn how hackers in a TK Maxx parking lot managed to steal 94m credit card details costing the organization $1bn; how a 17 year old leaked the data of 157,000 TalkTalk customers causing a reputational disaster; how Mirai can infect companies' Internet of Things devices and let hackers control them; how a sophisticated malware attack on Sony caused corporate embarrassment and company-wide shut down; and how a phishing attack on Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta's email affected the outcome of the 2016 US election.
STEAM Play Learn: 20 fun step-by-step preschool projects about science, technology, engineering, art, and math!
Ana Dziengel - 2018
The acronym STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. At the preschool level, this doesn’t mean trying to teach your kids robotics and engineering, but rather presenting them with open-ended projects that allow them to problem-solve, make mistakes, get creative, and most of all, have fun. While most preschool-age children are not yet reading, STEAM Play & Learn is meant to be child-driven. The images, illustrations, and projects are meant to appeal to kids of their age and abilities. Let them be the guide as you explore the projects in this book. Topics include symmetry and how light bounces to create reflections with mirror mandalas, diffusion and capillary action with tie dye towels, structural framing and bracing with marshmallow structures, and electrical currents with salty circuits. Other projects include:Color Mixing LabFrozen GoopSound TubesCitrus VolcanoesPaper Bag BlocksEgg Carton GeoboardsPool Noodle Marble RunPotions LabBalance ScaleSpin Art TopsMarble MazesTinkering SetPattern ProjectorsNewton’s CradleArt MachineLime LightThe projects in this book fall into three difficulty levels: Easy projects require parents and teachers to do nothing more than set out the materials and offer a challenge to children. A few of the easy projects will need parents to assemble components in advance of presenting them to kids. Medium projects will require some adult assistance while the project is underway. Children should be able to complete some of the tasks while stopping periodically for an adult to assist in a step. Difficult projects are meant to be adult-led. This is an opportunity for parents to encourage their child to offer problem-solving ideas along the way, giving children a chance to help and make suggestions. The cross-subject approach to learning in STEAM Play & Learn will prepare young children for the subjects they will soon learn in elementary school and beyond. These 20 projects will provide hours of fun education for both kids and parents!
The Darkest Web: Drugs, Death and Destroyed Lives... The Inside Story of the Internet's Evil Twin
Eileen Ormsby - 2018
Inside the dangerous world that lurks beneath the bright, friendly light of your internet screen.Dark...A kingpin willing to murder to protect his dark web drug empire. A corrupt government official determined to avoid exposure. The death of a dark web drugs czar in mysterious circumstances in a Bangkok jail cell, just as the author arrives there.Who is Variety Jones and why have darknet markets ballooned tenfold since authorities shut down the original dark web drugs bazaar, Silk Road? Who are the kingpins willing to sell poisons and weapons, identities and bank accounts, malware and life-ruining services online to anyone with a wallet full of Bitcoin? Darker…A death in Minnesota leads detectives into the world of dark web murder-for-hire where hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin is paid to arrange killings, beatings and rapes. Meanwhile, the owner of the most successful hitman website in history is threatening the journalists who investigate his business with a visit from his operatives - and the author is at the top of his list. Darkest…People with the most depraved perversions gather to share their obscene materials in an almost inaccessible corner of the dark web. A video circulates and the pursuit of the monsters responsible for 'Daisy's Destruction' lead detectives into the unimaginable horror of the world of hurtcore. There's the world wide web - the internet we all know that connects us via news, email, forums, shopping and social media. Then there's the dark web - the parallel internet accessed by only a select few. Usually, those it connects wish to remain anonymous and for good reason.Eileen Ormsby has spent the past five years exploring every corner of the Dark Web. She has shopped on darknet markets, contributed to forums, waited in red rooms and been threatened by hitmen on murder-for-hire sites. On occasions, her dark web activities have poured out into the real world and she has attended trials, met with criminals and the law enforcement who tracked them down, interviewed dark web identities and visited them in prison.This book will take you into the murkiest depths of the web's dark underbelly: a place of hitmen for hire, red rooms, hurtcore sites and markets that will sell anything a person is willing to pay for - including another person. The Darkest Web.
Digital Human: The Fourth Revolution of Humanity Includes Everyone
Chris Skinner - 2018
This is transforming lives through financial inclusion and digital identities. It means everyone can talk, trade and transact—anytime, anywhere. Such a radical revolution has happened only three times in human history: becoming human, becoming civilised and becoming commercial. Becoming digital is the fourth revolution, and it is changing the very nature of humanity. Chris Skinner, author of the bestselling Digital Bank, explores the transformations that are sweeping through all spheres of life: the domination of global digital giants; the advent of new financial structures (FinTech); the disruption brought about by new forms of currency like bitcoin; the challenges facing traditional banks; the uplifting of the world’s poor; and the rise of artificial intelligence.Digital Human is a visionary roadmap for the future, a timely guide on how to navigate the worlds of business and finance as we create the next generation of humanity.Includes the first-ever in-depth English-language case study of Alipay, the mobile wallet that aims to be used by over two billion humans.
Pornistan
Aditya Gautam - 2018
Fast delivery through DHL/FedEx express.
Supercharge Power BI: Power BI Is Better When You Learn to Write DAX
Matt Allington - 2018
There are three learning areas required to master everything Power BI Desktop has to offer: TheM Language, The DAX Language, and analysis. Super Charge Power BI clearly explains the necessary concepts while at the same time giving hands-on practice to engage the reader and help new knowledge stick.
You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches
Josephine Wolff - 2018
Each breach—the theft of 145.5 million Americans' information from Equifax, for example, or the Russian government's theft of National Security Agency documents, or the Sony Pictures data dump—makes headlines, inspires panic, instigates lawsuits, and is then forgotten. The cycle of alarm and amnesia continues with the next attack, and the one after that. In this book, cybersecurity expert Josephine Wolff argues that we shouldn't forget about these incidents, we should investigate their trajectory, from technology flaws to reparations for harm done to their impact on future security measures. We can learn valuable lessons in the aftermath of cybersecurity breaches.Wolff describes a series of significant cybersecurity incidents between 2005 and 2015, mapping the entire life cycle of each breach in order to identify opportunities for defensive intervention. She outlines three types of motives underlying these attacks—financial gain, espionage, and public humiliation of the victims—that have remained consistent through a decade of cyberattacks, offers examples of each, and analyzes the emergence of different attack patterns. The enormous TJX breach in 2006, for instance, set the pattern for a series of payment card fraud incidents that led to identity fraud and extortion; the Chinese army conducted cyberespionage campaigns directed at U.S.-based companies from 2006 to 2014, sparking debate about the distinction between economic and political espionage; and the 2014 breach of the Ashley Madison website was aimed at reputations rather than bank accounts.
DevOps for the Modern Enterprise: Winning Practices to Transform Legacy IT Organizations
Mirco Hering - 2018
Reverse Innovation in Health Care: How to Make Value-Based Delivery Work
Vijay Govindarajan - 2018
For more than a decade, leading thinkers, including Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen, have argued passionately for value-based health-care reform: replacing delivery based on volume and fee-for-service with competition based on value, as measured by patient outcomes per dollar spent.Though still a pipe dream here in the United States, this kind of value-based competition is already a reality--in India. Facing a giant population of poor, underserved people and a severe shortage of skills and capacity, some resourceful private enterprises have found a way to deliver high-quality health care, at ultra-low prices, to all patients who need it. This book shows how the innovations developed by these Indian exemplars are already being practiced by some far-sighted US providers--reversing the typical flow of innovation in the world.Govindarajan and Ramamurti, experts in the phenomenon of reverse innovation, reveal four pathways being used by health-care organizations in the United States to apply Indian-style principles to attack the exorbitant costs, uneven quality, and incomplete access to health care. With rich stories and detailed accounts of medical professionals who are putting these ideas into practice, this book shows how value-based delivery can be made to work in the United States. This "bottom-up" change doesn't require a grand plan out of Washington, DC, agreement between entrenched political parties, or coordination among all players in the health-care system. It needs entrepreneurs with innovative ideas about delivering value to patients. Reverse innovation has worked in other industries. We need it now in health care.
The Road to GraphQL
Robin Wieruch - 2018
The book is full with applications you are going to build along the way with React.js and Node.js. Afterward, you will be able to implement full-stack JavaScript applications.